OK, so as I understand it, the key revocation mechanism is used to revoke a signing key in your web of trust: so you say to other GPG users that your previously-used identity has been compromised, and you wish to establish a new identity that is still you (still maintains the same level of trust); ignore the old key, that's "not me" anymore. Therefore, it is not possible to encrypt a message to the "old" me, nor is it possible to consider the "old" me trusted anymore for new messages.
However, it is possible for the "old" secret key to decrypt old messages. For example: read just under "Generating a revocation certificate".
Is there a method with GPG in which something similar can be done to revoke an encryption key? Say that you have a laptop which gets stolen with both ones' keys and some encrypted files (financial data, say) and you wish to remove the laptop's ability to decrypt those files. Clearly, if the laptop never connects to a keyserver, it would never get a revocation, but is there a method by which one can create a revocation of the encryption key such that, should that laptop contact a keyserver and get the revocation message, the files are no longer decryptable?
(and yes, my secret key is password protected by a long, hard-to-brute-force password, but still, I was curious if there were a more-sure way to kill the decryptability of a key).